GE develops high-tech fridge magnets that could save the world billions of dollars in energy costs

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One of the world’s biggest draws of electricity is refrigeration and air conditioning. (Yes, it’s somewhat ironic that, by trying to stay cool, we pump millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere). General Electric, GE, believes it has discovered a new method of magnet-based refrigeration that is 20-30% more efficient than existing refrigeration technology, which almost universally uses a liquid refrigerant and compressor. GE launched the first commercial electric refrigerator in 1927 — and fridges have fundamentally remained unchanged for almost 100 years. GE hopes that its magnet-based tech can become the refrigeration method of choice for the next 100 years.

At the heart of GE’s new refrigeration technology is the magnetocaloric effect. The magnetocaloric effect, like vapor-compression refrigeration (the method used in all modern cars, fridges, etc.) was discovered a very long time ago, but there have always been large barriers preventing its commercial adoption. Basically, some metals get warmer when exposed to a magnetic field, and then cool down again when the magnet is removed. By doing this repeatedly, you can create a heat pump that moves thermal energy from one place and deposits it elsewhere. (This is exactly what your AC unit does, incidentally.)

For a variety of reasons, though, it has never been possible to build a commercial magnetocaloric refrigeration unit. For a long time, researchers could only make it work with superconducting magnets that had to be cooled to very low temperatures — which made it useful as part of a larger, cryogenic cooling system, but useless for room-temperature situations. In recent years, the development of better magnetocaloric materials and strong room-temperature magnets has allowed the technology to inch slowly forward. To put this in perspective, the GE researchers say they’ve been working on magnetocaloric refrigeration for 10 years, and it took them five years to create a “huge machine” capable of reducing the temperature by around 1 degree Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). Now, they’ve created a desk-sized device that’s capable of cooling by around 44C (80F) — more than enough to power freezers, fridges, and air conditioning units.

“We’ve spent the last 100 years to make the current refrigeration technology more efficient,” says Venkat Venkatakrishnan, one of the researchers who is working on GE’s magnetocaloric refrigerator tech. “Now we are working on technology for the next 100 years.” Apparently GE has demonstrated the tech to the Department of Energy, White House, and EPA. “We believe we are the first people who shrunk it enough so that it can be transported and shown. We were also the first to go below freezing with the stages,” Venkatakrishnan says. (Read: Wristify: A personal Peltier wrist cooler that could save the US millions in energy costs.)

Now, then, it’s just a matter of size. In the video above, you can see GE researcher Michael Benedict holding up what appears to be a prototype for magnetocaloric cooler that would fit inside a modern fridge or air conditioner. The team is now working on a unit that can drop temperatures by around 57C (100F), while consuming even less power. There’s no word on the current efficiency of the system, only that their eventual goal is to be 20-30% more efficient than vapor-compression refrigeration. If such efficiency gains can actually be realized, billions of dollars in energy costs could be saved — billions of dollars that, rather neatly, would end up in GE’s pockets.

Oh look, everyone, a code! Looks ancient Hebrew, but I think we can decrypt it. Let’s see, I think it says “I am a pathetic piece of shit who creates spambots to prey on the unintelligent and desperate and should be jailed and raped in the ass with a pineapple” or something along those lines…

Joseph Edward Bodden

please, that is a waste of food, there are people who would love that pineapple… try pine cones, fir cones…

Bill

Heck, even a wire wheel. It can be used over and over.

SirGCal

I’ve been about all of this for years. My in-laws have two refrigerators in the house. We have one and it’s always out of room. They complain every time they come over why we don’t get another one. Cause it’s the most expensive thing in the house to run… Save maybe the AC in the hot months when it’s used. And we’re all about the footprint. We already did the tankless waterheater (wow!, even using gas, what a difference), new windows, etc. But they can’t “make” cold. They can only remove heat which is an expensive process. I’ve been constantly thinking about this myself but this is a much better solution than what we use today.

Generally, anything that revolves around running electricity through something is incredibly inefficient :)

Dozerman

Ha. I know, right?

Then again, just think about how inefficient a mechanical system can be…

I suddenly want to build a mechanical computer…

Jeff Vahrenkamp

Peltier cooling works by transporting heat in one direction across a doped semiconductor (Electrons can carry heat energy, so when they flow, so does the heat energy they contain). Peltier cooling is only about 1/4 as efficient as compressor technology, I think mostly due to the resistive heat that is produced when you pass electrons through the semiconductors.

Magnetocaloric effect relies on the fact that the alloys used like to have their magnetic domains disordered, so when you put them in a magnetic field they heat up because you are organizing their domains. IF you cool the alloy to room temp while in the magnetic field then remove it, it takes energy to disorganize the magnetic domains, so the alloy then cools.

Dozerman

This is the same technique used to produce liquid Helium, then?

Jeff Vahrenkamp

if what I understand what I’ve read and remembered, liquid helium is generally produced by the combination of compressing and decompressing gasses (like your freezer does already) and the linde technique, which involves spraying the helium through an insulated nozzle, and only works when it’s already cooled to below 66K. The Magenetocaloric effect is used to reach temperatures below the condensation point of helium (I don’t think the linde technique works well on liquid helium, limiting the lowest temperatures to about 2K.) Relying on evaporation of the helium you can get down to about 0.3K. The Magnetocaloric effect allows you to get below this. I think you can also use lasers to cool gasses lower than this point, but the volume you can cool is much less than you can with magnetocaloric effect.

Marc Guillot

So cool … literally :-)

Egfrow

Premature announcement. It’s obviously not ready. GE are not the only researchers working on this type of technology. The main alloy ingredients being used are Gadolinium, Silicon, and Germanium, now with a touch of iron. These alloys bring the Curie Point to room temperature so that the magnetocaloric effect can be used without super conducted Temps.

MadJoe

I love how they say billions of dollars of energy costs could be saved as if the cost of energy isn’t going to skyrocket to make up the difference. Adorable.

mrseanpaul81

Nobody is in the business of skyrocketing energy prices just to “make up” the difference. Things move based on supply and demand (in theory,but practice is not far off). Energy price would skyrocket due to price increase in fuel (blame Wall Street) not because a new more efficient technology just came along and will save people money so we “must” hike price to make up the difference

Purple-Stater

As this technology would be slow to be adopted (there won’t be a mad rush of people running to replace thier refrigeratros and A/Cs just because this is more efficient), it would not have any noticeable effect on the increasing demand for energy. Therefore there is no reason to believe that it would possibly effect the cost of energy in any way.

chojin999

Just a +20% or +30% over current technologies ? And this magnetic based tech surely generates high EMPs

Dozerman

I doubt this would be any serious threat to electronics closer than a few inches.

Dozerman

I doubt this would be any serious threat to electronics closer than a few inches.

mrseanpaul81

You get so much more radiation from the sun and the environment. I saw a chart once that show that man-made radiation is just a small percentage of the overall radiation you are constantly bathing in. Just that man-made radiation carry information, think of it as a small increase for a purpose!

RobertPPruitt

Yeah, but you have to remember 2 things about radiation. The first being that we evolved with the natural radiation, so it doesn’t really harm us even though radiation itself is harmful. The second is that ANY radiation above and beyond what is natural IS harmful.

The medical establishment has stated that there is NO safe dose of radiation, even a single X-ray increases your cancer risk. So any and every tiny little bit we get above what we have evolved to handle does harm to our bodies.

mrseanpaul81

There is no such thing as “natural” vs. “artificial” radiation. Radiation is radiation (We are talking about low “lower” frequency radiation, not x-ray levels). Most of the man-made radiation that we are bathing in is below visible spectrum aka lower frequency so the X-Ray analogy is moot! Although I will admit that this is still being research.

Two main passage from the wikipedia article hit the nail in the head

“The effects of electromagnetic radiation upon living cells, including those in humans, depends upon the power and the frequency of the radiation. For low-frequency radiation (radio waves to visible light) the best-understood effects are those due to radiation power alone, acting through the effect of simple heating when the radiation is absorbed by the cell. For these thermal effects, the frequency of the radiation is important only as it affects radiation penetration into the organism (for example microwaves penetrate better than infrared). Initially, it was believed that low frequency fields that were too weak to cause significant heating could not possibly have any biological effect”

and the second passage being:

“The World Health Organization has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation as a possible group 2b carcinogen.[13][14] This group contains possible carcinogens with weaker evidence, at the same level as coffee and automobile exhaust.”

So most man-made radiation (not all) is below visible spectrum in terms of frequency. Only specialized stuff like Airport scanners (known as Terahertz scanners) and x-ray machines and the like are widely used stuff above visible spectrum that comes in frequent contacts with lots (millions) of human.

Don’t get me wrong, there are other machines emiting radiation above visible spectrum used in specialized industries and stuff that come in contact with the operators but don’t come in contact with lots (millions) of humans

mrseanpaul81

1 hertz is a full cycle every second, so 1000 hertz aka 1 kilohertz is 1000 cycle every seconds.
1 million hertz aka 1 megahertz is a million cycle every second.

For some of you this is child’s play and you’ve been in contact with this stuff since forever and my explanations are a long and very boring rant.

For others, I hope it shed some light into a technical discussion. I hope it makes it more accessible to the curious mind that did not have this type of training.

IdaRusskie

20% efficiency increase is a lot. Makes a big difference if you paying for the air conditioning in a small hotel where the bill is 20,000 a year. that 4,000 a year savings. now if you had 1100 properties that’s 4,400,000. who wouldn’t want an extra 4 million in their pocket?

I know! Can we really trust tech that’s been developed by scientists who like Coors?

James Riendeau

Coors & Co. probably paid for product placement.</jaded>

Ivor O’Connor

32+100=132 max ambient temperature in summer. That’s just barely ok for working in the south west. If not kept clean and working properly I wouldn’t be surprised to see 30% of its efficiency lost bringing down the freezer to working only in places where the temperature only rises to about 90F. Hopefully they will improve upon this to allow a greater temperature differential.

A 20 to 30% increase in efficiency will make a small freezer that currently uses about $100 a year down to perhaps $75 a year. Or perhaps a difference of $500 over a 20 year life span. I wonder how much more these units will cost using such exotic components?

Love the idea. And thanks for explaining things so well.

Jeff Vahrenkamp

Dude Ivor, where are you that the ambient temperature ever gets to let alone stays at 132F? :) Current record for highest temperature recorded was 134F and that was only for a short time.

The major benefit of this technology, along with its increase in efficiency is also the lack of need for high efficiency compressible gasses like CFCs and HCFCs, which have been know to be bad news for the ozone for a while and are being phased out where ever possible.

Also while saving $25 a year on a small freezer doesn’t sound that great (I really have no idea how much power in total my fridge/freezer uses, think about paying for cooling in every house with an AC in the US (and maybe heating). Then 30% becomes a much larger number.

I suppose the easy rule of thumb to apply is if the new units are X% more efficient they should not cost no more than X%. (Yes I realize the math is not right but it’s an easy rule to use.)

Not having compressible gas is a big plus.

I did say it was “barely ok” even with a 30% loss. I figure over time the system will lose much of it’s efficiency. Using Phoenix as an example it could lose 19% of it’s original efficiency and still keep things frozen through the summer. See http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/USAZ0166. Keep in mind this is the ambient temperature. A large percentage of garages, barns, etc., where one might put freezers are much like heat traps and get much much hotter than the ambient temperature.

Purple-Stater

Yeah, but saving that small amount for each refrigerator, freezer, air conditioner, etc, in the entire house, and dollars start adding up pretty quickly.

massau

Couldn’t a large compression type heatpump pump up to 7 times the heat around than you put into them, at least at temp delta of 20 to 30 C. so can this do the same or even better?

standard

I’m an assassin; and after reading this, I’m expecting a call from my friends in the energy industry.

ziffster1

i dont get it ,given they are talking mass produced domestic fridge then why are they not using a version of The Leó Szilárd/Einstein refrigerator design as that is said to be cheaper to make and run,and durable.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator
“The Einstein–Szilard or Einstein refrigerator is an absorption refrigeratorwhich has no moving parts, operates at constant pressure, and requires only a heat source to operate. It was jointly invented in 1926 by Albert Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd”

Wonderfull, with evolution of science and technology GE is coming the number one of the world which is developing technologies to make extration safer and more efficient, creating high-tech products and solution that will solve some of the world toughest problems.
Dedicated to innovation in energy, health, infra-structure or subsea devices that usher in new phase in Drilling.

Yay, anti-capitalist author! Good article about a great innovation, ruined at the very end by a profoundly ignorant comment:

“If such efficiency gains can actually be realized, billions of dollars in energy costs could be saved — billions of dollars that, rather neatly, would end up in GE’s pockets.”

Hey, surly occupier, stand corrected: Those billions of dollars of savings would happen in every household that has any refrigeration, all around the world, benefitting everyone by lowering their electrical costs, for the next 100 years. The new technology will cost more at first, but will also quickly come down in price to compete with the old technology. Some of that increased cost (of refrigerators and AC units) would indeed go toward GE’s royalty checks, but that will represent only a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the total amount saved worldwide by everyone who adopts the technology over the next century.

Furthermore, a majority of the profits realized by GE will go the stockholders as a dividend payout – and if you have a 401k, you will likely benefit from this increased value as well, as it will strengthen the entire market. If you don’t have a 401k, then you deserve your fate, and should stop blaming others for your own personal ‘income inequality’.

JP

You can also save millions of dollars in fuel..

RobertChase

“If such efficiency gains can actually be realized, billions of dollars in energy costs could be saved — billions of dollars that, rather neatly, would end up in GE’s pockets” — huh? GE will make its money selling and licensing refrigeration technology; it would only indirectly benefit from energy savings insofar as they are credited by users when purchasing such technology. The benefit conferred must outweigh any higher costs which might be involved in making magnetocaloric refrigerators; holmium costs a dollar per gram.

Good news indeed.
I’m already impressed with the efficiency of my Danfoss [CETOP] 12Volt refridgerator system, an efficiency which i substantially increased by adding external insulation to the standard 2inches of foamed polyurethane.

Doubling the average thermal resistance of the cabinet literally halves the energy consumption. A low tech homemade energy saving within inexpensive reach of the home handyman is particularly beneficial in a solar 12Volt dwelling machine..

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